"The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."
--Barack Obama, 12/27/2007, Des Moines, Iowa
In politics, twenty-nine months is an eternity. But it's still amazing what an eternity can do. At the beginning of that span, Barack Obama was a fresh face and an inspiring young outsider campaigning against Senator Clinton largely based on her status as the ultimate Washington insider. And at the end of it? There he was, campaigning for ultimate insiders like Senators Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln--and against newer, grassroots-supported candidates who were about to stake their own claim to going toe-to-toe in a hotly contested primary against battle-scarred machine politicians, and coming out clean on the other side.
Not that Obama's star power was to help in either case: in Pennsylvania, Congressman Joe Sestak defeated Senator Specter by a comfortable margin, while in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln was staggered and, after gaining less than 45% of the vote, forced into a runoff against a surging Bill Halter. And while some have used the results to question Obama's star power and campaigning potential for the rest of the midterm cycle, what actually seems open to more question is our President's political instincts.
The truth is, Obama should know better from previous experience. In 2006, then-Senator Obama endorsed Joe Lieberman for re-election during the Democratic Primary precisely during a time at which base Democratic voters were extremely motivated by the tragic failure in Iraq. Despite an open disagreement with Senator Lieberman on the most vital Democratic issue of the day, Obama campaigned for Lieberman to win the Democratic primary against a more progressive challenger.
The Senator from Illinois certainly wasn't motivated by ideological affinity. Maybe it was the hope of getting more institutional support during his run for President shortly thereafter, or perhaps by the idea of gaining Lieberman's support for difficult policy initiatives in case he became President. Either way, Obama's candidate lost the primary in an unprecedented swell of grassroots anger.
(This story should be sounding familiar right about now.)
Strange circumstances, however, ensured that Obama would get the opportunity to find out just how well his commitment would be rewarded. Senator Lieberman, of course, was re-elected as an independent because of Connecticut's lack of a sore loser law and the absence of any competent Republican nominee. And just like the entire progressive movement expected that he would, the newly independent Senator Lieberman accorded Obama absolutely no loyalty--first campaigning vigorously for John McCain, and then giving off a consistently anti-Democratic message to the media about health care reform in the wake of Scott Brown's election.
Now, another person's thought process may have been something like this: "well, supporting incumbent Senators in contested primaries who are unpopular with the progressive base didn't seem to work out so well. Maybe I should be careful about doing that again." But not President Obama's. And while the case of Senator Specter may have been more understandable given Specter's recent commitment to the Democratic Party, Obama's support of Blanche Lincoln is utterly incomprehensible.
Blanche Lincoln is a deeply unpopular incumbent running for re-election in a cycle of extremely high anti-incumbent sentiment who polls no better against Republican opposition than her more progressive challenger. Even worse, Blanche Lincoln nearly destroyed any chance Obama had at passing the legislation that he was intending on using to establish the success of his entire presidency. Moreover, Lincoln is just as unlikely to support future signature initiatives on energy policy and labor policy, regardless of whether Obama campaigns for her or not.
Simply put, Obama has absolutely no reason whatsoever to support Blanche Lincoln, outside of the age-old Washington incumbent protection racket. But that racket isn't what inspired a legion of political neophytes to sign up with their first ever political campaign. President Obama has already seen the result of playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players. So why is he expecting a different result?